The US Licence for War Crimes and the State of Paralysis of the Muslim Ummah

Dr. Firoz Mahboob Kamal

The license for war crimes and a great threat for the humanity

There is no doubt that what Israel is committing in Gaza is the textbook case of war crimes. The US-led western countries have given Israel not only the right of self defence but also a full licence for a genocidal cleansing of the Palestians from their homeland. It is indeed the full license for war crimes. Israel continues to exercise such a license with full force. The US-led coalition is  blocking every effort of cessation of war in the UN. So, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) continues its relentless bombing on Gaza’s civilian population. The IDF announced that it has bombed 11,000 targets in Gaza. Gaza has only 141 square miles of land; so on average, in every square mile of Gaza, 78 targets are bombed. Even in both the  World Wars, no city was so intensively bombed as Israel did in Gaza.

The western countries proved to be the birthplace of toxic ideologies like racism, white supremacism, colonialism, imperialism, fascism, nazism, ethnic cleansing, World Wars, gas chambers and dropping nuclear bombs. They showed no limit in their crimes. Such western legacy didn’t. It thrives in the genocidal regime of Israel. Therefore, apartheid system, although dead in South Africa, now flourishes in Israel.

Supporting a crime is indeed the ethical, political and military complicity in crime. Only the people with the genocidal mindset can support Israel’s genocidal war crimes. Hence, Israel’s war crimes have exposed not only the sick and criminal mind set of the Israeli war criminals but also the morally depleted souls of the western leaders. It is indeed a great threat for the whole of humanity. The western leaders are important leaders in world politics. How can the world be a safe place with its powerful leaders of such a criminal mindset?

Gaza: hotspot of carnage and graveyard

Gaza is now a hotspot of genocidal carnage and graveyards. The Israeli military operation aims at elimination of all Palestinian population from Gaza. The Health Ministry of Gaza has reported on 2/11/2023 that more than 9,000 people have been killed since the start of the war. Of them, 3,760 are children and 2,030 are women. It is also reported that 22,000 are injured and 2,600 persons are missing under the rubbles. Even hospitals, mosques, churches, ambulances and refugee camps are not spared by the Israeli bombing. The IDF has bombed Jabalia Refugee Camp -the largest one of its kind three times in three days and has killed 200 people there. Almost half of the deaths are children. The Israeli Army is now fighting for a land invasion into Gaza and planning for its full occupation.

The war is not limited to Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli settlers have started burning homes, shops and cars owned by the Palestinians. The IDF is also firing on the Palestinians. It is reported that more than 135 Palestinians are killed in the West Bank and 1700 are put in detention. There are about half a million settlers in the West Bank. Now it looks that the Israeli government has given green lights to the Jewish settlers to clean the Palestinians from the West Bank.

A textbook case of terrorist state

The USA and its allies argue that Israel has the right of self-defence. But they do not give such a right of self-defence to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians exercise their rights of self defence, they call it terrorism. Even helping the Palestinians for their self-defense is portrayed as a crime. Terrorism has its dictionary meaning. It is the unlawful use of force for political purposes. In the true sense of terrorism, Israel is created by terrorism, it sustains by terrorism and it expands by terrorism. The history is full of testimonies on that. In fact, Israel is a textbook case of a terrorist state.

Before the British occupation in 1917, the Jewish population was less than 8 percent in Palestine. Without taking the views of the 92 percent indigenous Palestine, the British government and its Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour gave Palestine to the Jews for building a Jewish homeland there. Such British decisions paved the way for more heinous crimes like the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from their ancestral land. Palestine didn’t belong to the British empire, they were there only as colonial occupiers. So the colonial regime of the British illegally gave the land to the Jews. Thus the UK became the illicit father of the criminal state Israel. Now it exists as an apartheid state of the Jews.

During the British occupation, the Jewish population was raised to 37 percent in 1948 by planned import of Jews from abroad. To accommodate foreign Jews, more than 700,000 Philistines were forced to evict from their homes. More than 500 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground. It is a great crime against the indigenous Palestinians. Such legacy of criminality still thrives in Israel. The same criminal legacy of eviction and occupation is now being practised against the people of Gaza.  

So, the current crisis in the Middle East is the continuation of the anti-Muslim colonial policy of the British. It is indeed the starting point of a new crusade in the Middle East. The solution of the current crisis doesn’t lie in giving legality to the British colonial crime like the recognition of Israel, rather undoing the whole old crime by ending the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Otherwise the old crime will continue to metastasize and destabilise the whole world.    

The US complicity in Israeli war crimes

Israel stands as the worst criminal state on the earth. What damages and deaths  Russian could incur in Ukraine in about 2 years, Israel could commit several times more than that in only 26 days. Along with the British colonial crimes, the USA also shows its complicity. The USA now works as the economic, military and political life line for the terrorist state of Israel. In fact, Israel survives only on US life-support. Every bomb and every bullet that are used to kill the Palestinian man, woman and children are made with the US money and technology. Every year, the US donates 3.8 billion dollars to Israel. About 20 percent of Israel’s military budget comes from the USA. Such US aid proved crucial for Israel’s survival.

On a youtube video, President Joe Biden is found to argue that funding Israel is the best investment of the USA. He also said that if there was no Israel, we had to create an Israel. President Biden also argued that Israel is fighting the USA’s war. He claims that if there was no Israel, the US would have to deploy their own soldiers in huge numbers to fight so many wars there. In fact, this is the reason that the USA and its allies never condemn the Israel occupation of Palestine and its war crimes. Rather, they portray the Israelis as the victims. They label fighting against the illegal occupation as a terrorist act. So, Hamas and Islamic Jihad -the organisations that fight against the Israeli occupation are labelled as terrorists. Hamas has killed 1405 Israelis, they condemn it. But they stay deaf and mum on the Israeli killing of more than 9,000 Palestinians. Thus they expose their own moral death. In fact, because of such moral death, they could fully support and sponsor the Israeli war crimes.

The Muslim ummah in paralysis and the inherent pathology

A paralysed man is known for his visible inability and inaction. Such inability and inaction now overwhelm the whole Muslim Ummah. The leaders of the Muslim world are just watching the ongoing massive genocide and destruction, but doing nothing. In the midst of such war crimes, silence and inaction are also crimes. Bolivia -a South American country showed a deep sense of morality and humanity. Bolivia has declared the cessation of diplomatic relations with Israel and has withdrawn its ambassador from Israel. Chile and Columbia have also withdrawn the ambassadors from Israel. To condemn such grotesque war crimes, it doesn’t need to be a saint or angel. Men of iota of morality and humanity can do that. But it is a huge shame that none of the heads of the Muslim states could show such morality and humanity. It shows how the Muslim countries are ruled by morally depleted people. It is the real problem of the Muslim World. The countries like Turkiye, Egypt, UAE, Sudan, and Morocco are still having their ambassadors in Israel. They didn’t cease their relation with Israel. 

The Muslim ummah has an inherent pathology for its visible paralysis. It suffers from very corrosive and divisive politics. More than 1.5 billion Muslims have failed to build a single civilisational state. About 10 million Jews have a civilisational state called Israel. If any Jew faces any problem in any part of the world, Israel does everything to help him or her. About 1.1 billion Hindus have a civilisational state called India. So India looks after the Hindu interests all over the world. If a Hindu faces any discrimination in Bangladesh or Pakistan, India will do everything to help him. The Christians have a civilisational state called the USA and the EU. Hence, when the Christians of South Sudan and East Timur started their independence wars against the respective Muslim countries, the USA and the EU supported them with money, weapons and diplomacy. When there was a khalifa, the Muslims had a civilisational state, too. But that was destroyed by the external and internal enemies of Islam.  

Except Iran, all other Muslim states are either national, sub-national or tribal in nature. Their political and military agenda doesn’t go beyond that tribal or national interest. These tribal states do not bother about the sufferings of the Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Myanmar, China and India. So, the Arab tribal leaders find no shame to make close friendships with Muslim genocidal regime of Narendra Modi in India. The same way the tyrant autocrats in UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan make friendship with Israel.

Moreover, like the Palestinians, most of the Muslims also live under the occupation of their despotic regimes. These autocratic regimes are no less brutal than the zionist Israelis. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and in many other Muslim countries, the people indeed face a de facto war conducted by their own tyrant rulers. These autocrats are indeed the ideological cousins of the Israeli war criminals. This is why, the rulers of Muslim countries like Egypt, Morocco, UAE, Jordan,  Bahrain and Sudan could make intimate friendship with Israel and stand aloof from the defenceless Palestinians.The Saudi autocrats -the so-called guardian of holy sites, too, stand more closer with the Israelis than with the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia was almost ready to open its diplomatic mission in Israel. But the current Hamas-Israel war has watered down such a Saudi plan. On the other hand, the brutal and secularised tribal Army of Pakistan, instead of helping the Palestinians, proved its cold-blooded readiness to kill thousands of Palestinians in September 1970 (called Black September) and to dismember its own country in 1971. Like before, the state of Pakistan now runs its war of attrition against its own people and has put the most popular and the most pro-Palestine leader Imran Khan castigating in prison.  

In the midst of more than 50 Muslim countries, only Iran could show some civilizational sense. The oil-rich Arab countries think that Palestinians need only some relief goods, money, medicines and house construction materials. Since these rulers did not give liberty to their own people, they do not think that the Palestinians need that liberty either. They also pressured Palestines to accept Israel -as they put pressure on Yasir Arafat and compelled him to surrender in Oslo. So they show no interest to enhance the ability of the Palestinians for self-defence. The tyrant Arab regime failed to understand that one can’t make peace with a robber. Yasin Arafat already proved that by signing the Oslo agreement.

Only the Islamic Republic of Iran could realise the need for Palestine. Therefore, Iran is the only country that feels that mere relief goods will not benefit the defenceless people of Palestine. They direly need assistance to develop their own ability to fight the Israeli occupiers. So Iran helped Hamas and Islami Jihad significantly. Because of the Iranian help, Hamas could dismantle the myth of Israel’s invincibility to the dust. It is an extraordinary  success for Hamas. They will be remembered in history.

If countries like Pakistan -the only nuclear power in the Muslim world, Turkiye -a NATO member and Indonesia -the largest Muslim country in the world had helped Palestinians to build their self-defence, the outcome would have been much different. At least thousands of Palestinians could have been saved and the destruction of Gaza could have been prevented. But these Muslim countries preferred to stay criminally silent.

The captivated ummah and the policy of first thing first

More than 1.5 billion Muslims, too, failed badly to grow up as a Muslim ummah. The Muslim World literally looks like an open-air global prison with more than 50 prison cells. Each prison cell represents a Muslim country. The rulers of the Muslim countries are not real statesmen or sovereign rulers. They work like a jailer cum prison superintendent. Their sole task is to keep the whole Muslims ummah incaptivated. And it is the policy of the US-led western powers to sustain such captivity of the ummah. They are the arch enemies of democracy in the Muslim World. This is why there is no democratic state in the neighbourhood of Israel. Democracy means empowerment of people. One election in Palestine gave birth to Hamas. They are not going to let that happen again. So, whoever wants to challenge the imposed captivity, meet the fate of President Dr. Mohammad Morsi of Egypt and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan. The generals like Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt and Asim Munir of Pakistan are ready to obey the US command to keep the prison wall of the Ummah intact.    

An imprisoned man may be physically fit and strong; but he cannot do anything unless he himself gets out of the prison. The Muslim people living in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and in most of the Muslim countries are very eager to help Palestinians. Because, it is a holy jihad that opens doors to jannah. Defending the Al-Aqsa mosque and peripheral holy land is not the sole duty of a few thousands Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, it is the duty of the whole ummah. But 1.5 billion Muslims cannot do anything to free Al-Aqsa; they are themselves captivated by their rulers.

Therefore, the occupation of Palestine can only be ended if the Muslim ummah can break the walls of their own prison cells and get themselves liberated first. So the jihad for the liberation of Palestine should start not only in Palestine but also in Egypt, Jordan, Syria. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,  Bangladesh, Indonesia and other Muslim countries. As long as the Muslim Ummah remain captivated in their own prison cell, the fate of liberation of Palestine looks very gloomy. So the first thing must be done first. 02/11/2023